My approach to work with different food related problems
In private practice I regularly get clients with food related issues. As well as the usual bulimics and anorexics I regularly come across people who have different types of obsessions about food. I have seen numerous clients who have literally only ever eaten a handful of foods for many years. The list of what is “ok” for them often excludes any form of fruit or vegetable although interestingly every single client has always felt fine about chips and chocolate! In most instances these clients had never tried any kind of food outside this narrow list. It’s not liking the taste or smell as they have never tried these foods, but rather that “it didn’t feel right” for them to eat such items. The key to working with such clients is figuring out how they are making the decision as to what is “ok” and what is “not ok”. The feeling of what is acceptable of course has to be triggered by a specific set of thoughts and in my experience helping these individuals is all about figuring out how they are creating the problem and changing the unhelpful process.
One of the most common factors with such problems was how the client talked to themselves when seeing foods that didn’t “feel ok” to them. They would literally say to themselves in an anxious voice “That’s not good” or “That doesn’t look right” In almost every instance they were literally telling themselves that there was a problem which resulted in them feeling that to eat this food would be a problem! Once the unhelpful internal dialogue is adjusted then the behaviour usually changes quite soon after. Of course this is not the only way to resolve this problem, but it’s a consideration many NLP practitioners miss, especially if the original teaching was more “visually inclined!”
Food Obsessives and righteous eating…
A few years ago I read an interesting article in The Guardian about the emergence of food obsessives who had a condition, termed “orthorexia nervosa” This affects equal numbers of men and women, and sufferers tend to be aged over 30, middle-class and well-educated. The name for this condition came from a Californian doctor, Steven Bratman, in 1997, and is described as a “fixation on righteous eating”. He commented that until a few years ago, there were so few sufferers that doctors usually included them under the catch-all label of “Ednos” – eating disorders not otherwise recognised. Now, experts say, orthorexics take up such a significant proportion of the Ednos group that they should be treated separately.
“I am definitely seeing significantly more orthorexics than just a few years ago,” said Ursula Philpot, chair of the British Dietetic Association’s mental health group. “Other eating disorders focus on quantity of food but orthorexics can be overweight or look normal. They are solely concerned with the quality of the food they put in their bodies, refining and restricting their diets according to their personal understanding of which foods are truly ‘pure’.” Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out. The obsession about which foods are “good” and which are “bad” means orthorexics can end up malnourished. Their dietary restrictions commonly cause sufferers to feel proud of their “virtuous” behaviour even if it means that eating becomes so stressful their personal relationships can come under pressure and they become socially isolated.
It’s all about balance and please let’s leave the badgers alone…
Social trends can also affect eating behaviours and I recall a time in the early 1980s when “vegetarianism” was almost a term of abuse! These days most restaurants and cafes cater really well for vegetarian options as social trends are now quite different. However I doubt if this new suggestion by Clarissa Dickson Wright is going to catch on anytime soon –
”I would have no objection to eating badgers. I have no objection to eating anything very much, really.”
I’m all for a healthy diet and have been vegetarian for over thirty years. However the orthorexics made food the absolute centre of their lives and evangelical in their zeal in communicating their new found “food religion” to others. Over the years I have encountered fruitarians, macrobiotics, organic obsessives and even people who insist on only eating food raw! Personally I’m always wary of folks who insist that there is only one way of thinking or living and the internet is full of forums and blogs lambasting those who don’t believe. Interestingly many such folks appear quite conflicted and far from happy, while insisting that they are quite the opposite! Good diet and nutrition are essential for good physical, mental and emotional health, but in my view it’s all about balance, not extremes.
